


Doing it Right

by Kahvi



Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-22
Updated: 2010-09-22
Packaged: 2017-10-19 03:01:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/196141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahvi/pseuds/Kahvi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's incredible how bored you can get, stuck in someone else's incorporeal body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doing it Right

**Author's Note:**

> Companion piece to [](http://smaych.livejournal.com/profile)[**smaych**](http://smaych.livejournal.com/)'s excellent [Craving](http://community.livejournal.com/reddwarfslash/346241.html).

Felines don't have much of an attention span, especially not when you're making them do both their moves and your own in a board game, and Cat eventually slithered off to do whatever it was he did when left to his own devices. Lister stared at the deserted table dejectedly. Letter combinations that were presumably words in _some_ language lay strewn about the game board, seemingly at random. Felines didn't much like rules, either. Neither did Lister, come to that, but ignoring rules was no fun when you couldn't really participate in the game in the first place.

Everything was different in this body. Different, and bloody difficult. It was a bit like when you’d sat too long on the loo, or fallen asleep on the couch, and your legs had fallen asleep, so that when you tried to walk, you couldn’t. Lister hadn’t realized why that was, before, but now it was obvious; you couldn’t feel them, so you didn’t know where they were. Couldn’t feel the soles of your feet hitting the floor. Couldn’t feel one thigh brushing up against another, or even the pressure of your own weight as your useless legs tried to support it. Being a hologram was like that; everything still worked, but you couldn’t feel it working.

And, well, what was the use of that?

You’d have thought it would have taken some getting used to, but Lister’s borrowed brain was electronic, and got used to it for him. The end result was disconcerting; you felt like you weren’t in control, yet everything ran smoothly, like a skutter with a stolen can of WD-40. Lister found the whole brain thing confusing; they’d transferred _something_ out of his body, and there had been nothing left. He understood how Rimmer could fit into his empty shell; he was a simulation, after all; software that could run on any hardware, even if, like Lister’s body, it was more flabby than hard. But in Lister’s case… what had been transferred? How was it existing inside the little metal shell that was Rimmer’s – his, now – light bee? Thinking about it just gave Lister a headache, which he took as evidence that he was still himself enough.

He couldn’t touch anything. That, Lister had expected, of course, but what he hadn’t realized was how wrong and disconcerting it felt to touch _himself_. It wasn't his body; the responses were all wrong. Obviously, one of the first things he’d tried was to wank. Stood to reason, didn’t it; there was nothing else to do! He’d read somewhere that if you put a primate in a room alone for long enough, it’d eventually start pleasuring itself. Had they tried it with holograms, Lister now felt certain, the entire study would have had to have been rated triple X. He didn’t particularly like the idea of touching Rimmer’s cock, but it wasn’t like he’d ever find out. Anyway, it had been a miserable experience. Sensation was dulled a little, like he was wearing gloves, but mostly it was like the first time you felt up a girl, and you were sort of fumbling your way along as you went; only here, there was no one to mumble ‘a little to the left, yeah’ just when his fingers started getting cramped. He did eventually come three times and in rapid succession, which had given him a newfound if reluctant respect for Rimmer, but it had felt like a hollow victory.

Really, a game of Scrabble with the questionably literate Cat was more than preferable to something like that, at least when Rimmer wasn't hovering around in the background. They'd set the game up in the drive room because staying in his and Rimmer's shared quarters was getting on Lister's nerves. Seeing Rimmer walk around in Lister’s body like a cheap raincoat seemed almost offensive, no matter how irrational that line of thought was. Lister had agreed to the exchange after all, and he was determined to see it through. Anyway, Rimmer had to be experiencing the same, eerie sense of disconnection; your arms reaching too far or hurting in the wrong places, and the face you were wearing refusing to mold to the expressions you wanted to put on it. He would steal glances at Lister with his own face when he thought Lister wasn't looking; probing, curious glances. Like the smegger was worried about what Lister would get up to in _his_ body! Like there was anything he _could_ do. When wanking was out, you were petty much scraping the bottom of the entertainment barrel, as far as bodies went. Besides, Lister wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know what the garish uniformed twonk got up to on his own, now that he was temporarily corporeal.

Sighing, cracking a back that confusingly didn't need cracking, Lister stood up. Maybe he _should_ risk going back to the bunk room; Rimmer was supposed to be at the gym now, anyway. If he wasn't, well, at least Lister could get some entertainment out of seeing the bastard squirm. Might even be worth the extra pounds that sort of shirking would rack up. The tought cheered him up considerably, up until the point where he looked down and realized he was standing in the middle of table. "Triple word score," Lister mumbled, carefully extracting the body that was in no way his own.

In retrospect, it seemed odd to say that a _lack_ of sound should have clued him in, but everything about Rimmer's behavior patterns were odd. Lister had learned to fake snoring noises and pretend he was sleeping when the lower bunk grew supernaturally quiet. It had gotten worse after Rimmer's death; holograms didn't need to breathe, after all. Lister found he still did, though; he couldn't imagine what it took to supress that natural urge even for the few minutes it usually took Rimmer to take care of business. The business Lister caught him in the middle of doing right now, to _Lister's_ body.

Rimmer hadn't noticed him, that much was clear. Not that strange, perhaps; Rimmer's eyes were closed, and hologrammatic footsteps didn't make any noise. The lights were down too, and Rimmer - or maybe Lister, if you wanted to be confusing about it - was still fully dressed, his hands down his trousers (those were definitely Rimmer's).

It was the most pathetic display Lister had ever seen.

Not, perhaps, the best reaction to catching your bunk mate with his hand on your cock in your body, but it's not like there was any sort of precendence for this sort of situation, and anyway, Lister didn't care. It looked ridiculous, and furthermore, he now had some previous experience in this area.

 _I know something you don't._ The thought was warm and comforting, making its way through Lister's imprisoned mind, out his borrowed larynx and lips, forming the only words possible:

"Yer doin' it wrong."

Hours later, Lister found himself on his back in his bunk, flexing Rimmer's hands. The arms they were attached to were too long for Lister's jacket, which pulled back to reveal pale, white wrists. In the half-light of ship's night, the glow of their projection was just faintly visible, like the flame inside a grubby lantern. They were no more his than the chest they were awkwardly, now, exploring, the sinewey muscles of the thighs below or the cock that was slowly stirring, and with a growing sense of unease, Lister began to wonder if Rimmer hadn't been the only one doing it wrong.


End file.
